The Civil Jury Is A Valuable Safeguard

When Human Laws Contradict Or Discountenance The Means, Which Are Necessary To Preserve The Essential Rights Of Any Society, They Defeat The Proper End Of All Laws, And So Become Null And Void.

There Is Something So Far-fetched And So Extravagant In The Idea Of Danger To Liberty From The Militia That One Is At A Loss Whether To Treat It With Gravity Or With Raillery; Whether To Consider It As A Mere Trial Of Skill, Like The Paradoxes Of Rhetoricians; As A Disingenuous Artifice To Instil Prejudices At Any Price; Or As The Serious.

The Variety Of More Minute Interests, Which Will Necessarily Fall Under The Superintendence Of The Local Administrations . . . Cannot Be Particularized Without Involving A Detail Too Tedious And Uninteresting To Compensate For The Instruction It Might Afford.

[t]he Constitution Ought To Be The Standard Of Construction For The Laws, And That Wherever There Is An Evident Opposition, The Laws Ought To Give Place To The Constitution. But This Doctrine Is Not Deducible From Any Circumstance Peculiar To The Plan Of Convention, But From The General Theory Of A Limited Constitution.

Take Mankind As They Are, And What Are They Governed By? Their Passions.